09 January 2007 4:28 PM

Once again the Labour government are impaled on their own stupid education policy, and once again the Useless Tories are coming to their rescue. Poor old Ruth Kelly has quite rightly put her child first and ignored the silly 'principles' that, as a Labour Education Secretary, she supported and must still publicly support.

Quite rightly, the Tories have praised her for looking after her child. But they haven't made any hay out of the fact that this makes nonsense of Labour's mad comprehensive obsession. David Cameron has cleared Miss Kelly of hypocrisy. Can this be right? The point is that the hypocrisy lies not in sending her child to a private school, but in doing so while clinging to the wretched policies which prevent the state education system from being able to educate her child properly. But the Tories cannot say this because they, too, are now equally committed to non-selective, rigour-free state schools, from which the only escape is through wealth, influence, luck or power.

The Labour elite's vast, despicable hypocrisy about schooling is their weakest point, the place at which their dishonesty and selfishness is most perfectly exposed.

Famously, Anthony Blair said in May 1997 "what I want for my own children I want for yours". But what he turned out to want was places at the London Oratory, a near-unique school which - as I pointed out at the time - was comprehensive in the same way that 10 Downing Street is an inner-city terraced house. It was also not available to most of the rest of us.

His was only one of several methods used by Labour politicians to pretend to support comprehensive education while avoiding it in person. Here are some other methods used by these people: Buy a house in the catchment area of a good school; get your child into a grammar school; hire private tutors while continuing to send your child to a state school you know isn't good enough.

Because Mrs Blair is a Roman Catholic, the Premier's children qualified for the Oratory, a very special and exceptional school. Mr Blair was able to avoid the bog-standard comprehensives of North London, where he then dwelt, without having to commit the terrible sin of paying fees, which in those days would have destroyed his political career.

Why exactly is this is a sin, except in that he preaches to others what he doesn't practise himself? Why should it be morally better to send your children to a bad expensive school, kept going by tax money however bad it is, than to a good expensive school, kept going by private fees? Is it a matter of privilege? Well, not exactly. The parent who pays fees does not stop paying taxes. He still funds the costly state schools, whether good or bad, that he doesn't use. And by paying fees, out of taxed income, he helps create the school place he does use, with money that he might just as easily have spent on wine, or air fares. He doesn't deprive anybody of anything. If all the private schools were shut down, their excellence would simply disappear. It wouldn't, by being mixed into the state comprehensive system, miraculously raise its general standards. Private schools are good because they are not comprehensives.

True, if he didn't have the money, he couldn't pay at all. And this is deeply unfair, but only for a reason I'll come to in a moment. But nobody (at least nobody outside the ranks of the Communist movement) claims that it's wrong on principle that some people can spend more money on cars, or holidays or clothes than anyone else, especially if they have earned their money. It certainly doesn't disqualify anyone from being a Labour politician to do such things. Quite a lot of Labour MPs and peers are comfortably off, and many Labour supporters are very rich indeed. Yet, if you happen to have the money to spare, it is far more laudable, surely, to spend money on schooling the next generation in knowledge, manners and culture, than on a couple of weeks on a beach or on a cupboard full of fashionable high-heeled shoes. Better still if some of your fees go (as they often do) on bursaries to provide private education for children whose parents cannot afford it.

By comparison, what's so good about a rich and influential person using his knowledge and skills to wangle a place in a school miles from his home, which might otherwise go to a bright child from a poor home? Surely, that's a real abuse of the privileges of the middle class, since we all know there is a strictly limited number of good state school places, and the poor have hardly any chance of going private.

That is why it is so unfair that only the well-off can pay fees. In the 1960s the mid-range private schools were dying, losing pupils to the grammar schools. Now, even a bad private school can look good in the league tables because far too few state schools are any good, and many of those that are good are harder to get into than the most exclusive club you care to name. It wasn't always like this. Just 40 years ago, in this country, there were thousands of high-quality schools which didn't charge fees. Most of them were Grammar Schools (in Scotland, Academies). There were also Direct Grant schools, private schools which took a large block of pupils from the local state primary system. The parents of the children involved didn't pay fees at all.

As a result, many children from less well-off homes got a first-rate education. Alan Bennett's an example. His father was a Co-op Butcher, but he got to Oxford, with no special measures to help him. Many, many Labour MPs benefited in the same way. In fact, in the mid-1960s the grammar schools were taking over Oxford and Cambridge, even though they weren't specially-equipped (as the good private schools were) to deal with the classical subjects needed in the entrance exams that Oxbridge then held.

Nobody is saying that the system of 40 years ago was perfect. The 11-plus exam was too arbitrary. Germany has a selective system without any such exam. There were too few grammar schools. Many more could have been built at a fraction of the cost of going comprehensive. There were too few grammar places for girls. More should have been created. The Secondary Moderns, to which 11-plus failures went, were often not as bad as is now claimed - and in many cases better than the comprehensives of today - but badly needed improving. There were supposed to be technical schools, but they often hadn't been built. They should have been. But whatever was wrong, it was absurd to destroy the one part of the system that actually worked, like amputating a healthy leg and leaving the diseased one in place.

If we could reverse this foolishness, then Ruth Kelly, and many, many more without her advantages and income, could be sure that their children would be properly educated without needing to pay £15,000 a year for what ought not to be a privilege.

But Miss Kelly, as Education Secretary and as a politician, has set her face against this fair remedy. She is quite entitled to do all in her power for her young. I praise her for it. But how can she then continue to support the system which has failed her own child, and the children of thousands of others?

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